Saturday, 13 October 2012

The Snake and the Bag of Apples

This hobo’s moved into the old nightsoil alley. He sits
there all day staring at the cobbles like maybe if he looks pathetic enough
then God’ll come down and give him a hug and tell him everything’s gunna be
alright. I watch him from the window as I eat my Weet-Bix just hoping that I
might see him do something. For a while I thought maybe he knew something that
nobody else did, that by sitting still forever you found inner peace or
something. Then I thought he was dead. But this morning I can see his breath
plume and disappear into the cold.

Walking to school, I decide I’m
gunna try and talk to him. I haven’t said a word to him since he showed up one
day and I thought he was gunna ask me for money, like because I wear a tie I
must be privileged. I stand there, right in the middle of his eyes so that my
feet tread on his cheekbones and my forehead holds his eyelids open. And still
I’m not sure he sees me until I speak.

“Hi,” I say.

“Hi,” he says. His voice is
coarse as a fart. He stares me in the face but his eyes look too bloodshot to
see anything.

“What’s your name?” I ask.

“Brandon.”
Shame. He looked like a Stanley.

“What are you doing here?”

“I live here.”

“Why don’t you live somewhere
better?”

He smiles and his teeth point
everywhere like brambles.

“Where would you recommend?”

It’s so weird that someone can
have nothing, not even a history. I run inside and find an old box of biscuits
and a bag of apples. He thanks me and places the apples on his lap.

“My mother told me not to accept
food from strangers,” he says.

I sit in English class and wonder
how Stanley ended up here. I mean,
he can’t have been homeless his whole life. He was probably abused as a kid and
stuff. You know, sex and violence and all that shit you see on TV. Grew up
stealing stuff from charity bins (I mean, isn’t that why they call them charity
bins?). I bet he broke into a couple of houses too. I wonder what he thought
when he was in there. Probably patted their dog and sat on the couch with a packet
of chips and watched Oprah repeats thinking the whole time that you had to be
born into this respectable lifestyle. He’s wrong though. I fight bloody to be
respected at this school. Like at lunchtime, Peter Carson throws his sandwich
at me in front of the lockers and everyone is laughing at me. So I knock him
down and sit on his chest and shove sandwich down his throat. He makes gagging
noises and his limbs jerk like he’s trying to escape in all directions at once
until the principal pulls me off him. He takes me to his office and shouts at
me for a bit. Then he sends me home.

I’m pretty riled so I have a
smoke down by the creek and walk home slowly. Stanley’s
asleep and the biscuits and apples are gone. I stand over him and look for
crumbs in his beard and wonder how someone with nothing can piss all over a
favour. I find the biscuits and apples in Mr. Finch’s bin. The arrogant bastard
hasn’t gone more than six steps to dump them. Now I know he can walk I wonder
if he can run.

The first apple catches him in
the temple. Juice and apple gore spatter across his dry-as-a-bone and his eyes
snap open. The second apple bounces off the fence above his head.

“Hey Stanley!
Is something wrong, Stanley? Why
don’t you do something about it?”

I get him a good one in the nose
and he’s up on his feet and I reckon behind that beard and hair he looks
scared. He turns and legs it up the alley and out of sight.

I stand there until I’ve calmed
down a bit, then I go inside and grab a bag of chips and sit by the window. The
alley looks so empty and useless without him. I wonder where he’s gone. I
wonder if he’s found another alley by now and a new cobblestone to stare at.
The chips taste like nothing and all I can see through the window is chunks of
apple. I wonder how long it will take for them to rot or wash away or for
someone else to pick them up.